The symphony’s programme.
Extracts from the Memoirs

[Note: between 1830 and 1855 Berlioz made a number of changes to the
programme of the symphony, which is given here in the two principal versions,
that of the first edition of the score in 1845, and that of 1855. The reader
will notice various differences between the two versions, chief of which is the
greater importance given in the 1845 version to the programme for an
understanding of the symphony.]

(a) 1845 version

Note

The composer’s intention has been to
develop various episodes in the life of an artist, in so far as they lend
themselves to musical treatment. As the work cannot rely on the assistance of
speech, the plan of the instrumental drama needs to be set out in advance. The
following programme* must therefore be considered as the spoken text of an
opera, which serves to introduce musical movements and to motivate their
character and expression.

*This programme should be distributed to
the audience at concerts where this symphony is included, as it is indispensable
for a complete understanding of the dramatic plan of the work. [HB]

Part oneDaydreams, passions

The author imagines that a young musician,
afflicted by the sickness of spirit which a famous writer has called the
vagueness of passions (le vague des passions), sees for the first time a
woman who unites all the charms of the ideal person his imagination was dreaming
of, and falls desperately in love with her. By a strange anomaly, the beloved
image never presents itself to the artist’s mind without being associated with
a musical idea, in which he recognises a certain quality of passion, but endowed
with the nobility and shyness which he credits to the object of his love.

This melodic image and its model keep
haunting him ceaselessly like a double idée fixe. This explains the
constant recurrence in all the movements of the symphony of the melody which
launches the first allegro. The transitions from this state of dreamy
melancholy, interrupted by occasional upsurges of aimless joy, to delirious
passion, with its outbursts of fury and jealousy, its returns of tenderness, its
tears, its religious consolations – all this forms the subject of the first
movement.

Part twoA ball

The artist finds himself in the most diverse
situations in life, in the tumult of a festive party, in the peaceful
contemplation of the beautiful sights of nature, yet everywhere, whether in town
or in the countryside, the beloved image keeps haunting him and throws his
spirit into confusion.

Part threeScene in the countryside

One evening in the countryside he hears two
shepherds in the distance dialoguing with their ‘ranz des vaches’; this
pastoral duet, the setting, the gentle rustling of the trees in the wind, some
causes for hope that he has recently conceived, all conspire to restore to his
heart an unaccustomed feeling of calm and to give to his thoughts a happier
colouring. He broods on his loneliness, and hopes that soon he will no longer be
on his own… But what if she betrayed him!… This mingled hope and fear, these
ideas of happiness, disturbed by dark premonitions, form the subject of the
adagio. At the end one of the shepherds resumes his ‘ranz des vaches’; the
other one no longer answers. Distant sound of thunder… solitude… silence…

Part fourMarch to the scaffold

Convinced that his love is spurned, the
artist poisons himself with opium. The dose of narcotic, while too weak to cause
his death, plunges him into a heavy sleep accompanied by the strangest of
visions. He dreams that he has killed his beloved, that he is condemned, led to
the scaffold and is witnessing his own execution. The procession advances
to the sound of a march that is sometimes sombre and wild, and sometimes
brilliant and solemn, in which a dull sound of heavy footsteps follows without
transition the loudest outbursts. At the end of the march, the first four bars
of the idée fixe reappear like a final thought of love interrupted by
the fatal blow.

Part fiveDream of a witches’ sabbath

He sees himself at a witches’ sabbath,
in the midst of a hideous gathering of shades, sorcerers and monsters of every
kind who have come together for his funeral. Strange sounds, groans, outbursts
of laughter; distant shouts which seem to be answered by more shouts. The
beloved melody appears once more, but has now lost its noble and shy character;
it is now no more than a vulgar dance tune, trivial and grotesque: it is she who
is coming to the sabbath… Roar of delight at her arrival… She joins the
diabolical orgy… The funeral knell tolls, burlesque parody of the Dies irae,**
the dance of the witches. The dance of the witches combined with the Dies
irae.

**A hymn sung in funeral ceremonies in the
Catholic Church. [HB]

(b) 1855 version

Note

The following programme should be distributed
to the audience every time the Symphonie fantastique is performed
dramatically and thus followed by the monodrame of Lélio which concludes and
completes the episode in the life of an artist. In this case the invisible
orchestra is placed on the stage of a theatre behind the lowered curtain.
If the symphony is performed on its own as a concert piece
this arrangement is no longer necessary: one may even dispense with distributing
the programme and keep only the title of the five movements. The author hopes
that the symphony provides on its own sufficient musical interest independently
of any dramatic intention.

Programme of the symphony

A young musician of morbid sensitivity and
ardent imagination poisons himself with opium in a moment of despair caused by
frustrated love. The dose of narcotic, while too weak to cause his death,
plunges him into a heavy sleep accompanied by the strangest of visions, in which
his experiences, feelings and memories are translated in his feverish brain into
musical thoughts and images. His beloved becomes for him a melody and like an idée
fixe which he meets and hears everywhere.

Part oneDaydreams, passions

He remembers first the uneasiness of spirit,
the indefinable passion, the melancholy, the aimless joys he felt even before
seeing his beloved; then the explosive love she suddenly inspired in him, his
delirious anguish, his fits of jealous fury, his returns of tenderness, his
religious consolations.

Part twoA ball

He meets again his beloved in a ball during a
glittering fête.

Part threeScene in the countryside

One summer evening in the countryside he
hears two shepherds dialoguing with their ‘Ranz des vaches’; this pastoral
duet, the setting, the gentle rustling of the trees in the light wind, some
causes for hope that he has recently conceived, all conspire to restore to his
heart an unaccustomed feeling of calm and to give to his thoughts a happier
colouring; but she reappears, he feels a pang of anguish, and painful thoughts
disturb him: what if she betrayed him… One of the shepherds resumes his simple
melody, the other one no longer answers. The sun sets… distant sound of
thunder… solitude… silence…

Part fourMarch to the scaffold

He dreams that he has killed his beloved,
that he is condemned to death and led to execution. The procession advances to
the sound of a march that is sometimes sombre and wild, and sometimes brilliant
and solemn, in which a dull sound of heavy footsteps follows without transition
the loudest outbursts. At the end, the idée fixe reappears for a moment like a
final thought of love interrupted by the fatal blow.

Part fiveDream of a witches’ sabbath

He sees himself at a witches’ sabbath, in
the midst of a hideous gathering of shades, sorcerers and monsters of every kind
who have come together for his funeral. Strange sounds, groans, outbursts of
laughter; distant shouts which seem to be answered by more shouts. The beloved
melody appears once more, but has now lost its noble and shy character; it is
now no more than a vulgar dance-tune, trivial and grotesque: it is she who is
coming to the sabbath… Roars of delight at her arrival… She joins the
diabolical orgy… The funeral knell tolls, burlesque parody of the Dies Irae.
The dance of the witches. The dance of the witches combined with the Dies Irae.

Symphonie
Fantastique: extracts from the
Memoirs (chapters 4, 26, 31)

Chapter 4

[...] My adolescent attempts at composition were
tinged with deep melancholy. Most of my melodies were in minor keys. I was aware
of this weakness but unable to avoid it. My thoughts were shrouded in the
darkness where my romantic love of Meylan had confined them. In this state of
mind, as I read and re-read Florian’s Estelle, I would probably have set to
music sooner or later some of the numerous romances found in that insipid
pastoral idyll, which at the time I found gentle. This I did not fail to do.

Among other pieces I wrote a very sad one on
words which expressed my despair at leaving the woods and the places honoured
by the feet, illuminated by the eyes [La Fontaine, Les deux pigeons]
and the little pink boots of my cruel beauty. This colourless poetry comes back
to mind today together with the spring sunshine in London [April 1848], where I
am beset by major worries and a terrible anxiety, seething with concentrated
fury at having to face here as elsewhere so many absurd obstacles… Here is the
first stanza:

I burnt this romance, as well as the
sextet and the quintets, before my departure for Paris, but the melody came
discreetly back to my mind when in 1829 I undertook to write my Fantastic
Symphony. It seemed to me to express exactly the overwhelming grief of a
young heart in the first pangs of a hopeless love, and I adopted
it. It
is the melody sung by the first violins at the beginning of the largo in Part I
of this work, which has the title: Dreams and Passions. I have not changed it in
any way. [...]

Chapter 26

[…] Immediately after this composition on the subject of Faust
[the Huit scènes de Faust], and still under the influence of Goethe’s
poem, I wrote the Fantastic Symphony; some parts caused me great
difficulty, but others came with incredible ease. Thus the adagio (the Scene
in the countryside), which always has such an effect on the general public
and on myself, exhausted me for more than three weeks; I gave it up then started
it again two or three times. By contrast the March to the scaffold was
written in one night. Nevertheless I made many changes to both pieces and to all
the other movements of the work over a period of several years.

For some time the Théâtre des
Nouveautés had been playing comic operas and had a fairly good orchestra whose
conductor was Bloc. He suggested I offer my new work to the directors of the
theatre and organise with them a concert to have the symphony heard in a
performance. They agreed, but only because the strangeness of the programme
appealed to them and they believed it would excite the curiosity of the crowds.
But as I wanted the performance to be on a grand scale I invited from outside
more than eighty musicians who when added to those of Bloc’s orchestra made a
total of one hundred and thirty performers. Nothing had been prepared to
accommodate satisfactorily such a mass of players, neither the necessary
decoration, nor the scaffolding, nor even the desks. The directors replied to
all my enquiries on the subject with the calmness of people who do not realise
what the problems are: “Rest assured, all this will be looked after, we
have a competent stage manager”. But when came the day of the rehearsal and
my one hundred and thirty players wanted to take their places on the stage no
one knew where to put them. I tried the pit used for the small orchestra, but
there was scarcely room there even for the violins. The theatre was in uproar,
enough to drive mad even a calmer composer than myself. People were calling for
desks, the carpenters hurriedly tried to put together some substitute, the stage
manager swore as he looked for his struts and props, there were shouts for
chairs, for instruments, for candles, the double basses lacked some strings,
there was no room for the timpani, etc., etc. The orchestra assistant did not
know who to listen to; Bloc and I made superhuman efforts, but all to no
avail. Chaos reigned and it was a complete rout, a musical Crossing of the
Beresina.

In the midst of this turmoil Bloc
nevertheless insisted on trying out two movements, “to give the
directors”, as he put it, “an idea of the symphony”. We rehearsed
as best as we could with this chaotic orchestra the Ball and the March
to the scaffold. This last piece elicited from the players frantic and
vociferous applause. All the same the concert did not take place. The directors,
terrified by all this hurly-burly, recoiled from the undertaking. The
preparations needed were too extensive and time-consuming; they did not know
that so much was needed for a symphony.

My plan was thus wrecked for want of desks
and some carpentry… It is from this time that I have started to devote so much
care to the practical organisation of my concerts. I know only too well what
disasters can be caused by the slightest negligence in this respect.

Chapter 31

[…] But I did not want to leave Paris
without performing in public my cantata Sardanapalus, the finale of which
had been ruined at the prize distribution of the Institute. I therefore
organised a concert at the Conservatoire, where this academic work was played
side by side with the Fantastic Symphony which had not yet been heard [5
December 1830].
Habeneck undertook to conduct this concert for which all the players offered me
their services for the third time without a fee, a kindness for which I cannot
thank them too much. […]

The performance was admittedly not
flawless, and such complicated works cannot be played perfectly after only two
rehearsals. But the overall effect was good enough to give an adequate idea of
the music. Three movements of the symphony, the Ball, the March to the
scaffold and the Witches’ sabbath caused a sensation. The March
to the scaffold in particular took the audience by storm. The Scene in
the countryside made no impression at all. It is true that it was very
different then from what it is now. I therefore decided immediately to rewrite
it, and F. Hiller, who happened to be in Paris at the time, gave me excellent
advice on the subject which I have tried to put to good use. […]